[Interest] Qt, openssl and redistribution (of binary packages)

René J.V. Bertin rjvbertin at gmail.com
Sun Jan 22 15:44:28 CET 2017


Hello,

Can anyone on here give an informed break-down of the implications of the incompatibility between the GPL and OpenSSL licenses on redistribution of binary builds of Qt itself, and of dependents, and their severity when Qt is linked to OpenSSL vs. when OpenSSL is loaded at runtime?

As an example, MacPorts currently doesn't provide a binary package of Qt Creator because the Qt port is configured with -openssl-linked (i.e. linked to libssl). I find it surprising that Qt itself could be distributed that way in binary form but not a dependent, and would hope that configuring with -openssl-runtime could change that.

FWIW, on Mac we could get around that by using SecureTransport, but I think that using OpenSSL has the benefit of allowing security updates even on OS versions Apple dropped.

Feedback appreciated!

Thanks,
René



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